New Features of Windows 8.1: Resizable Tiles

This is a continuing series on the changes, updates, revisions and new features found in Microsoft’s Windows 8.1 update.

A frequent criticism of Windows 8 is that tiles only came in two flavors: square or rectangle. Now, there’s a new, third size you can choose: small. This turns a tile into a very small square, useful if you want the tile out of the way, if you like a lot of little tiles, or if you’ve got a metric ton of apps installed. Having four small tiles in a single square is also useful to collect related apps.

Four related apps, such as components of Microsoft Office, work great as small tiles.

To change the size of a tile, just right-click on it and click Resize. You’ll have the option of Wide, Medium or Small. Note that only Modern Apps can be resized to Wide as this is how their Live Tiles display updating information; traditional Windows desktop apps only have Medium or Small options.